Will America slip from No. 1?
Bill Gates is among a growing number of CEO s whose concern is rising. "When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad," Gates told the governors, "I am terrified for our workforce of tomorrow." Gates pointed out that in 2001 India graduated a million more students from college than the United States did, while China has six times as many university students majoring in engineering. Many of those students are now staying home to work, saying no to U.S. jobs. As a result, U.S.-based companies are finding it increasingly attractive to build not only their manufacturing plants abroad but their R&D operations as well. The CEO of a major technology company says that as an executive, he is pleased-his firm will pay less in salaries--but as an American, he is deeply worried.
What's needed now is public recognition that, as Gates says, "America's high schools are obsolete." We should be not only alarmed but ashamed. Our leading figures--the presidents, for example, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, and Yale, along with the CEO s of Microsoft, Intel, and IBM--must rally Washington and the country to a revolutionary overhaul of public education. In our founding years, Americans were among the most literate people on Earth, and that put us on an upward path. The education of our young has always been a key to our greatness. Will we now rescue the next generation or condemn it to second place?
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